Bibcode
DOI
Wang, J. X.; Jiang, P.; Zheng, Z. Y.; Tozzi, P.; Norman, C.; Giacconi, R.; Gilli, R.; Hasinger, G.; Kewley, L.; Mainieri, V.; Nonino, M.; Rosati, P.; Streblyanska, A.; Szokoly, G.; Zirm, A.; Zheng, W.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 657, Issue 1, pp. 95-101.
Advertised on:
3
2007
Journal
Citations
8
Refereed citations
7
Description
Measuring the population of obscured quasars is one of the key issues in
understanding the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). With a
redshift completeness of 99%, the X-ray sources detected in the Chandra
Deep Field South (CDF-S) provide the best sample for this issue. In this
paper, we study the population of obscured quasars in CDF-S by choosing
the 4-7 keV selected sample, which is less biased by the intrinsic X-ray
absorption. The 4-7 keV band-selected samples also filter out most of
the X-ray-faint sources with too few counts, for which the measurements
of NH and LX have very large uncertainties. Simply
adopting the best-fit L2-10 keV and NH, we find
that 71%+/-19% (20 out of 28) of the quasars (with intrinsic L2-10
keV>1044 ergs s-1) are obscured with
NH>1022 cm-2. Taking into account
the uncertainties in the measurements of both NH and
LX, conservative lower and upper limits for the fraction are
54% (13 out 24) and 84% (31 out 37). In the Chandra Deep Field North,
the number is 29%; however, this is mainly due to the redshift
incompleteness. We estimate a fraction of ~50%-63% after correcting for
the redshift incompleteness with a straightforward approach. Our results
robustly confirm the existence of a large population of obscured
quasars.